NESSANA
(Auja el-Hafir) Israel.
A town in
the W part of the central Negev, on the border of Sinal.
From papyri found at this place its ancient name was
identified. Although not mentioned in Greek sources, the
travel account of Antonine of Placentia (A.D. 570) contains a reference to the “fortress in which the inn of St. George was, at a distance of twenty miles from the city of Elusa.”
Situated on the road leading from Beersheba to Sinai,
Nessana was visited by early travelers. During the second
half of the 19th c. the remains of the ancient town were
explored and some Greek inscriptions were discovered.
In 1936 the site was partly excavated. Since the lower
town lay completely in ruins, the excavators concentrated on the acropolis, where a citadel and two churches were in a better state of preservation.
In the Byzantine period Nessana consisted of a lower
town, built along the banks of a small wadi, occupying
an area of ca. 18 ha, and the acropolis, which occupied
a hill above the town to the W. Both parts of the
town were connected by built steps. The earliest remains
found on the hill (150 x 40-50 m) were pottery sherds
and coins of the 2d and 1st c. B.C. To this period the
excavators have attributed a small fort, but the typically
Nabatean architecture suggests the first half of the 1st c.
A.D., as does the typically Nabatean and Early Roman
pottery found around this fort. To the same period should
be dated a large ashlar-built cistern on the middle of the
acropolis, which the excavators had dated to the Byzantine period.
Most of the remains on the acropolis are, however, of
the Byzantine period. In the center of the hill stood a
citadel (95 x 45 m), protected by towers, and with a
gate on the S. The citadel had rooms on the E and W.
To the N and S of the citadel were two churches; the
one on the N was identified by an inscription as the
Church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus. In both of these
churches were discovered 150 papyri—Greek, Latin and
Arabic. These include a small number of literary papyri,
i.e., a Latin classical text, Latin-Greek glossaries, and
literature of the New Testament. The larger group of
papyri consisted of archives, dealing with personal, legal,
and economic matters. It is in this group that the name
of the town, along with the names of other towns in the
Negev, is mentioned. From these documents we learn
that during the late 4th and 5th c. a military unit, “The
Most Loyal Theodosians,” was stationed at Nessana,
and formed the greater part of the landowners. These
documents, which have not yet been fully studied, contain a great amount of information on the economic and
political life of the towns of the Negev in the Byzantine
period, and after their conquest by the Arabs in A.D. 636.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L. Casson & E. L. Hettich,
Excavations
at Nessana, II: The Literary Papyri (1950); C. J. Kraemer, Jr., ibid.,
III: Non-Literary Papyri (1958).
A. NEGEV
